Culinary code of Maslenica (Shrovetide) rites in Belarus and Podlasie

Abstract

The article aims to research how the culinary code of culture manifests itself in the Shrovetide rituals of Belarus and Podlasie (a region in eastern Poland, where ethnic Belarusians live on the border with Belarus). The tasks are to analyse the names of the festive period whose origin is motivated by the culinary code, to identify Shrovetide dishes, and to characterise the role of feasts in the Shrovetide ritual cycle. The article uses ethnolinguistic methodology. The text is written based on published sources, archival and field materials collected in Belarus and Podlasie. The culinary code is one of the main elements of the Shrovetide ritual cycle: it is used to “program” the prosperity of the peasant household for the coming year and to form the majority of local names of the holiday in Belarus and Podlasie (Maslenitsa, Zapusty, Zapusti, Zagaviny, and their variants). Abundant feasts symbolically influence the prosperity in the next year according to the principles of similarity magic. Throughout Belarus dairy products and pancakes are used as festive Shrovetide food, but in local traditions, other dishes can be considered Shrovetide. The consumption of meat products in the week before Lent has religious and local peculiarities: Catholics, as well as informants whose confessional affiliation is not specified, mostly from western Belarus, consider meat dishes obligatory, while the prohibition of meat consumption is due to the influence of the Orthodox Church and local traditions. In Podlasie, during the 2022–2023 field research, informants made almost no mention of special Shrovetide dishes. The common Polish tradition of eating donuts on Fat Thursday is gradually spreading to Podlasie. Shrovetide feasts in Belarus were more often family and less often friendly-neighbourly, while in Podlasie – vice versa. The feasts remain a characteristic feature of the week before Lent in Podlasie, but dishes do not differ from those on the feasts on other holidays